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Communicative/ functional approaches
The terms communicative and functional group together a variety oI approaches to translation. Sometimes
loosely used and not always deIined, they broadly represent a view which reIuses to divorce the act oI
translating Irom its context, insisting upon the real-world situational Iactors which are prime determinants oI
meaning and interpretation oI meaning.
We may distinguish three main strands oI thinking which have inIluenced this perspective on translation:
(a) the Iunctionalist views oI the British tradition in linguistics, stemming Irom J.R.Firth and continuing in
the work oI J.CatIord, Michael Gregory, Michael Halliday and others
(b) the notion oI communicative competence developed originally by Dell Hymes in response to the
Chomskyan view oI language competence
(c) within translation studies, a tradition stemming Irom Karl Bhler, which sees judgements about the
communicative purpose/skopos (Reiss and Vermeer) or set oI Iunctions (Nord) oI the act oI translating as
lying at the root oI translators` decisions (see SKOPOS THEORY).
The functionalist tradition
Whereas it would be true to say that linguistics and translation studies have, until comparatively recently at
least, undergone separate development and even denied any mutual relevance, it remains the case that agendas
set by various schools and strands within linguistics have, sooner or later, Iound their way into thinking and
writing about translation. Thus, structuralism, Iunctionalism, transIormational-generativism, sociolinguistic
and psycholinguistic issues have all inIluenced the debate. In general, those ideas have been most inIluential
which place meaning and communication at the centre oI linguistic analysis. Thus, Firth, building on
Malinowski`s notion oI context oI situation`, saw meaning in terms oI Iunction in context and rejected those
approaches to the study oI language which sought to exclude the study oI meaning. Crucially, he was critical
oI the restrictive view oI language as code which had been prominent in early communications theory. This
view reduced natural language to transmission oI inIormation, as in communications engineering:
The telephone people are only concerned with the electrical transmission oI the message, so that
adequate inIormation is accepted or put in at source and transmitted to the receiving end. What the
people at each end are thinking, intending, doing or not doing is completely irrelevant.
(Firth 1968:86)
In the Iunctionalist perspective, on the other hand, the context oI situation is crucial and must include the
participants in speech events, the action taking place and other relevant Ieatures. Following Firth, many
linguists, such as Halliday (1978), have undertaken the description oI communicative events and the analysis
oI variety in language, while others (CatIord 1965; Gregory 1967, 1980) have applied such notions to the
study oI translation. CatIord (1965:88) advocated a Iramework oI
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categories Ior the classiIication oI sublanguages or varieties within a total language`. Thus, register analysis
(see TEXT LINGUISTICS AND TRANSLATION) came to be seen as a powerIul tool in the classiIication
and analysis oI texts and, thereIore, in translation. Indeed, Ior Gregory (1980:466), the establishment oI
register equivalence is the major Iactor in the process oI translation. According to this view, a given language
utterance is seen as appropriate to a certain use within a certain cultural context; in a diIIerent linguistic and
cultural setting, adjustments have to be made.
Ideas such as these have been particularly inIluential in the assessment oI QUALITY in translation (House
1997). For House, a textual proIile oI the source text, involving register analysis and enhanced by pragmatic
theories oI language use, is.the norm against which the quality oI the translation text is to be
measured` (1997:50). From this, it Iollows that the degree to which.the |TT| textual proIile does not match
the ST`s proIile is the degree to which that TT is inadequate in quality` (ibid.). The addition oI the pragmatic
dimension here is important; as House points out, the breaking down oI a text into constituent elements,
without consideration oI the dynamics oI text, is at best atomistic. This point is central to Hatim and Mason
(1990), who add pragmatic and semiotic dimensions to their characterization oI the communicative domain oI
context. Likewise, Gutt (1991:1718) criticizes the descriptive-classiIicatory approach to translation studies,
with its proliIeration oI classiIicatory Irameworks`. But the communicative perspective remains a constant in
these and other recent works (Ior example Nord 1991; 1993): all share a view oI translation as communication
and thereIore base their view oI the translating process on an underlying theory oI communication.
The communicative event
Early views oI the process oI communication involved the notions oI encoding and decoding a message, which
was seen to consist oI bits oI inIormation. The translator was treated as a decoder and re-encoder oI messages,
who sought to relay them intact aIter making adjustments Ior inIormativity, depending on the relative (un)
predictability oI items in the source and target languages. This general view oI communication is applied to
translation by Nida (1964:120II.), who suggests that since, according to communication theory, inIormativity
is equivalent to unpredictability (Ior example, items in a message which are totally predictable are not
inIormative; those which are unpredictable are highly inIormative), part oI the translator`s job is to
compensate Ior the lower level oI predictability when a message is transIerred across linguistic boundaries.
The reasons Ior this lower level oI predictability may be linguistic (Ior example unIamiliar word order, use oI
words with lower Irequency oI occurrence, unIamiliar collocations) or cultural, including unIamiliarity with
the setting oI the source text. COMPENSATION is eIIected by building redundancy into the target text in
order to avoid what Nida calls communication overload`. Generally speaking, this involves lengthening the
message to spread the inIormation load. The notion oI cultural redundancy` hinted at in this view is a useIul
one, up to a point. The problem with this model oI communication is that it allows the social circumstances oI
text production and reception to be overlooked and, at the same time, implicitly views meaning as a
quantiIiable entity to be relayed intact Irom source to target language. Both oI these weaknesses are rectiIied
in studies which view language as social behaviour.
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One early contribution towards restoring the study oI communication to its social Irame-work is the Iormula
devised by H.D.Lasswell in 1948 Ior deIining the relevant characteristics oI a speech event: Who says what in
which channel to whom with what eIIect?` (quoted in Nord 1991:36). Later reIinements to the Iormula include
the addition oI when? where? whv? how? to encompass the Iull range oI Iactors aIIecting language in use.
Reiss (1984) and Nord (1991) are among those who situate the event oI translating in this communicative
Iramework. The approach insures against treating the text as an entity in itselI, divorced Irom the
circumstances oI its production and reception, a tendency which is still apparent in some uses oI translation in
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language teaching. The similarity oI the Lass-well Iormula to the use and user variables oI register analysis is
evident. A salient diIIerence oI emphasis, however, lies in the speciIic orientation towards the purposes oI the
enduser (whv? to what effect?). Concern with the communicative Iunction oI translation is a constant in recent
work on translation in Germany, including Hnig and Kussmaul (1982), Holz-Mnttri (1984), Reiss and
Vermeer (1984), and Nord (1991, 1993).
A related approach is that which sees the translator as a social being and considers his/ her competence as a
receiver and producer oI texts. The notion oI communicative competence is originally attributable to Dell
Hymes (1971), who introduced it to counteract the competence/perIormance dichotomy oI Chomskyan
linguistics. In place oI the ideal speaker-listener.unaIIected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as
memory limitations, distractions, shiIts oI attention and interest, and errors` (Chomsky 1965:3), Hymes was
interested in naturally occurring cultural behaviour and in what is possible, Ieasible and appropriate in given
social circumstances. For the purposes oI studying the translator`s communicative competence, we may adapt
the Iour-part classiIication proposed by Canale (1983) to account Ior the underlying systems oI knowledge
and skill required Ior communication` as Iollows:
(a) Grammatical competence. in the translator`s case, this entails passive command oI one and active
command oI another language system, in the sense oI possessing the knowledge and skill required to
understand and express accurately the literal meaning oI utterances
(b) Sociolinguistic competence. the translator`s ability to judge the appropriateness oI utterances to a
context, in terms oI such Iactors as the status oI participants, purposes oI the interaction and norms and
conventions oI interaction
(c) Discourse competence. the translator`s ability to perceive and produce cohesive and coherent text in
diIIerent genres and discourses (Hatim and Mason 1990)
(d) Strategic competence. the translator`s ability to repair potential breakdowns in communication and to
enhance the eIIectiveness oI communication between source-text producer and target-text receiver (Bell
1991:414).
The Iollowing text is part oI a European Union directive concerning the distribution oI pharmaceutical
products:
Article 2
Les Etats membres prennent toute mesure utile pour que ne soient distribues sur leur territoire que
des medicaments pour lesquels une autorisation de mise sur le marche conIorme au droit
communautaire a ete delivree.
Given the task oI producing an English text which is to have the status oI a legally binding document in the
target language community, the translator oI this passage might relate text to context by
(a) selecting Irom the lexical and syntactic potential oI the target language whatever items are thought to
relay the propositional meaning oI the passage most closely, making any obligatory changes to such things
as word order, Ior example member states Ior Etats membres
(b) taking into consideration the status oI the text as a directive, with binding Iorce on its users, and using
this as a criterion Ior rendering, Ior example, the present tense oI prennent as shall take
(c) attempting to reIlect the authoritative status oI the document (powerIul discourse) by adopting the
conventions oI the appropriate legal genre in English to produce an instance oI the text type instruction-
without-option`
(d) given the communicative setting, the genre and the discourse as speciIied in (b) and (c), seeking above
all, Irom a strategic point oI view, to resolve any potential ambiguity, ensure communication is explicit and
admits oI no legal loopholes.
Each oI these sets oI skills and knowledge is deployed by the translator in order to reIlect the intentions oI the
source text producer; but it is here that a signiIicant problem arises.
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What is intended meaning and how can it be identiIied?
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Translators are constantly conIronted with the Iact that they cannot know what their source text producer
knows or intends with any certainty. As receivers oI texts, they have no direct access to the communicative
intentions oI producers oI texts. What participants in communication, including translators, can do is to build a
mental model oI intended meaning on the basis oI the textual record and all relevant contextual inIormation
available, which is then matched against their knowledge oI language and oI the world at large. In this sense,
the receiver interprets, rather than understands, a text.
So, participants in communication (including translators) proceed on the basis not oI knowledge but rather oI
assumptionsabout each other`s assumptions and about the cognitive environment which producers and
receivers share. This is similar to the model oI communication upon which Gutt (1991), Iollowing Sperber and
Wilson (1986), bases his relevance-theoretic` account oI translation as interpretive use (see PRAGMATICS
AND TRANSLATION). In communication, there is always an expectation oI optimal relevance, deIined as
adequate contextual eIIects at minimal processing cost. According to Gutt, this is how hearers inIer what the
intended interpretation or meaning oI an utterance is: it is the interpretation that is most consistent with the
principle oI relevance, and there is never more than one interpretation that IulIils this condition` (ibid.: 31).
The translator, then, is engaged in interlingual interpretive use`, linking his/her communicative intention to
the intended interpretation oI the source text and ensuring that the target text resembles it interpretively.
Language function, text function, translation function
There have been many attempts to classiIy the Iunctions oI language. Among the most inIluential Iormulations
are those oI Bhler (1934), Jakobson (1960) and Halliday (1973). Bhler`s Darstellungsfunktion,
Ausdruckfunktion and Appelfunktion reIer, respectively, to the representation oI objects and phenomena, the
attitude oI the text producer towards such phenomena, and the appeal to the text receiver. These three
Iunctions correspond broadly to Jakobson`s ReIerential, Expressive and Conative Iunctions, although the latter
additionally distinguishes Phatic (the use oI language to create and maintain social contact), Metalingual and
Poetic Iunctions. Halliday distinguishes three macroIunctions: the ideational (representation oI experience),
the interpersonal (the speaker`s intervention in the use oI language and the expression oI attitude) and the
textual (the speaker`s potential Ior constructing coherent text). There is, then, a degree oI consensus among
these alternative Iormulations. It is on the basis oI Bhler`s typology that Reiss (e.g. 1976) distinguishes
between the inIormative text, the expressive text and the operative text, each calling Ior particular sets oI skills
and strategies on the part oI the translator. There can be no doubt that language Iunctions impinge signiIicantly
on the translator`s task oI relaying values Irom source text to target text. As Roberts (1992) points out,
however, it is important to distinguish between language Iunction and text Iunction. No actual text will exhibit
only one language Iunction. In Iact, all texts are multiIunctional, even iI one overall rhetorical purpose will
generally tend to predominate and Iunction as the ultimate determinant oI text structure (Hatim and Mason
1990).
It is Iurther necessary to consider the Iunction not just oI language and (source) text but also oI the translated
text; the reasons Ior commissioning or otherwise initiating a translation are independent oI the reasons Ior the
creation oI any particular source text. It is in this sense that the SKOPOS THEORY oI Reiss and Vermeer
(1984) is to be understood. The Iunction oI the translated text, including the institutional Iactors surrounding
the initiation oI the translation, is a crucial determinant oI translators` decisions. In this Iunctional view oI
translation, any notion oI equivalence between a source text and a target text is subordinate to the skopos, or
purpose which the target text is intended to IulIil. Adequacy with regard to skopos then replaces
EQUIVALENCE as the standard Ior judging translations. In a
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similar vein, Holz-Mnttri (1984) views translation as intercultural ACTION in which the goals oI the action
are both the recipient oI the translation and the speciIic Iunction the translation is to IulIil. Nord (1993:9)
introduces the Iurther distinction that it is not the text in itselI which has a Iunction; rather, a text acquires its
Iunction in the situation in which it is received.
In terms oI the European Union directive cited above, a Iunctional view would distinguish at least two possible
purposes Ior the translation. The text may be translated Ior inIormation, in order to give an accurate
representation oI the provisions oI the particular directive in question, or it may be translated in order to stand
as a legally binding text in a target-language community. The latter purpose is, oI course, more heavily
constraining than the Iormer. Such real-world purposes are paramount and complete the translator`s chain oI
communication. Thus, the communicative/ Iunctional perspective can be seen as an approach which relates the
circumstances oI the production oI the source text as a communicative event to the social circumstances oI the
act oI translating and the goals which it aims to achieve.
Further reading
Gutt 1991; Hatim and Mason 1990; HolzMnttri 1984; House 1997; Nord 1991, 1993; Reiss 1976, 1984; Reiss and
Vermeer 1984; Roberts 1992.
IAN MASON
Community interpreting
Community interpreting reIers to the type oI interpreting which takes place in the public service sphere to
Iacilitate communication between oIIicials and lay people: at police departments, immigration departments,
social welIare centres, medical and mental health oIIices, schools and similar institutions. It is sometimes
reIerred to as dialogue interpreting or public service interpreting.
Community interpreting is typically bidirectional and, as a rule, carried out consecutively. It covers both
interpreting in Iace-to-Iace situations and interpreting provided over the telephone and is probably the most
common type oI interpreting in the world. At one time perIormed only by volunteers, untrained bilinguals,
Iriends and relatives (sometimes including even children), community interpreting has gradually developed as
a proIession over the past Iew decades, in response to international migration and the consequent linguistic
heterogeneity oI most nations. Increasingly, it seems to be developing into a number oI distinct areas oI
proIessional expertise, such as medical interpreting`, mental health interpreting`, educational interpreting`
and legal interpreting`, the latter including COURT INTERPRETING. Yet to a large extent community
interpreting is still being perIormed by untrained, and oIten unpaid individuals, what Harris (1977) calls
natural translators`.
The Iirst international conIerence devoted entirely to issues oI community interpreting took place in Toronto,
Canada in 1995 (see Carr et al., 1997).
Community interpreting vs. other types of interpreting
The role oI the community interpreter is as vital to successIul communication as that oI any other type oI
interpreter. In addition, involvement in Iace-to-Iace interaction emphasizes the community interpreter`s role as
both a language and social mediator. While the textual material Ior conIerence interpreting largely consists oI
prepared (oIten written) monologues in the source language, community interpreters have to handle real-time
dialogue: more or less spontaneous and unpredictable exchange oI talk between individuals speaking diIIerent
languages, and they also have to interpret in both directions. This is oIten the case also in Iace-to-Iace
interpreting undertaken in business and diplomatic settings. However, proIessional community interpreting
diIIers Irom most other types oI Iace-to-Iace interpreting in that it is oIten understood and/ or required to
involve a high level oI neutrality and detachment; the community interpreter is
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